Freedom

The religionist from organized church have convinced many that if you live free you will fall into uncontrollable sin. The teaching of this view comes down to us from the earliest days of Christianity: “This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves.” (Galatians 2:4)

The reality of the situation is this: infants and children need care and protection. This is what organized church provides. As you mature into a son, you no longer need this kind of care. Through your growing spiritual maturity, you become more able to operate by the spontaneous leading of Christ’s life in your spirit. This is our living as an individual self. It is here that we become the most effective and useful for doing the will of the Father.

The issue of freedom most not be confused with independence. As we grow in freedom in Christ we are actually growing into a place of greater dependence on the Father. As we depend more on the Father we depend we depend less on the world’s systems, other people and ourselves. The Christians trapped at the infant level are always dependent on themselves, institution and other people. This dependence goes so far as to make these Christians dependent on the institutions of men for their relationship with the Father. This is why many people feel that they cannot break away from and form of organized religion.

What the institutional church sells as “protection” and “guidance” is all too often regulations and the denial of our God-given freedom. The institution’s actions in this area are motivated by the desire to maintain control over its members. The organizational church cannot bring itself to suffer loss of its position and status that would be necessary to allow its members to be free. Institutional church “protection and guidance” is, in reality, slavery. This is slavery to a worldly way of understanding things. From organized religions the “guidance” you often get is really regulation. The “protection” you get is really repression. All of these things are provided by the organization because there is insufficient trust by them in the Father’s ability or desire to provide our resources for effective living directly. Religion works on the fundamental premise that God does not want to have any kind of an ongoing personal relationship with each of us.

Rich

Get Real

Without too many exceptions getting real is easier said than done, but the reality in the love and truth of God’s heart for us beckons us to exit this make believe world and enter into one that is real.

To my way of thinking one of the most classic illustrations of not being real is the poignant story of Job from the bible. What God was looking for in this man’s life as well as I see him looking for in any of us is to be real, no saccharine carob coated niceness is going to cut it living in a world where trouble abounds.

I’m not criticizing Job, he was simple living out of the imprinted script he was born with, and this is but speculation on my part but there are those born with a most sunny predisposition of seeing the world and all that is in it with a warm and toe tapping Louis Armstrong feeling of it being “a wonderful world.”
I realize that in the original manuscripts there were no breaks grammatically, no chapters, but for conversation sake it took 38 chapters before God suddenly seems to come out from his ninja camouflaged absence and begins to speak into Job’s beginning stages of his religious melt down.

There is no way we can make God fit into anything that is fake, made up, Job like all of us are at best, great pretenders. As soon as Job begins his infant like baby steps of being real, low and behold God suddenly appears.
Imagine the nightmare only having gotten worse for Job if he had simply traded in his wrong confession for the “right” one presented to him by his three so called comforting friends. It seems that God’s highest priority for Job wasn’t about fixing him but of transforming him, bringing him to a place of knowing his deeply ingrained religious mind set was not going to allow him to cut through this insane world of pain and devastation.

Only as the reality of His unconditional love for us continues to permeate us, will we be able to go on in this inner journey of being freed to live out of our new identity verses that which has and continues to try to manipulate us living out of the old.

Rich

“Man-up”

I’m not sure where I first came across this expression. Roughly, it means to step up, to take responsibility and to display fortitude, courage, steadfastness, etc. despite the odds or how tough the situation may be…all those ‘manly’ characteristics that generally make women swoon. Think old movie stars like John Wayne, Gregory Peck, and Charlton Heston – the ‘manly men’. Now, those guys knew how to man-up!

These days, for men to ‘man-up’ in our culture is practically a foreign concept: consider the men who won’t commit, men who try to ‘score’ with as many women as possible, men who shirk responsibility for the children that result from these liaisons, religious men who treat their wives as chattels or who demand submission despite how poorly they treat their spouses, men who willingly allow women to take over the man’s responsibilities, men who either won’t work or who skip from job to job, men who’d rather play video games than face life’s challenges.

Where did this all start, and why is it so rampant?

Here’s food for thought:

Scene: the Garden of Eden
Characters: Adam, Eve, the Serpent

For thousands of years, women have taken the blame for the downfall of the human race because Eve succumbed to temptation in the garden, but I ask you this: where was ADAM when Even was being tempted - far away in some distant vineyard? No – he was right there!

Could it possibly be that when God said they could eat of any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that suddenly that very tree became mighty attractive to them? Consider Romans 7:7 that states:

I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, " YOU SHALL NOT COVET."

I am reminded of my Kindergarten kids – every year I wrestle with this dilemma: should I point out the red fire alarm box on the wall in my classroom? If I do, will it become irresistible to them to the point that somebody just has to touch it, or do I just ignore it and hope they will too?

So here’s my speculation:
I’m guessing that Adam was drawn to this tree like a bee to honey! I’m guessing that he secretly confided this attraction to Eve, but he wouldn’t man-up enough to actually act on his sinful inclination himself. How long were those two in the garden before the serpent arrived? Eons? Who knows? It doesn’t matter. It needn’t have been long at all – just long enough to inflame a desire so acute as to drive Adam wild! So, could it be that he conveniently allowed Eve to take the fall for something he himself longed to do? If so, he got a big pay-off. Not only did he get to blame the woman for the fall, but he also got to get a bite of the desired forbidden fruit. Remember, he was right there when Eve was being tempted and he did nothing! He didn’t step in to stop her, nor advise her to resist the enemy, nor chase the serpent away himself. After all, he had the authority. You’ve got to wonder why he didn’t exert it.

What was the result? For the next two thousand plus years, women have been treated as second-class citizens at best and less than dung at worst. A familiar Jewish adage goes something like this: “Thank you, God, that you didn’t make me a Gentile, a dog or a woman”. For centuries, women have been used and abused – by men.

Why is it that women typically have had to man-up far more often then the men in their lives? Why do so many men forsake their marriage vows, refuse to pay child support or hold down a job? Why is it that even Christian men shirk their responsibilities and allow their wives to take on the lion’s share and more of the workload when it comes to the workforce, child-rearing, meal preparation, laundry, etc. etc., all the while playing the ‘submit to me’ card?

On the other hand, I ask you: how many Christian men LOVE THEIR WIVES AS CHRIST LOVED THE CHURCH??? I hazard to guess: not many.

If my speculation is true – that Adam didn’t man-up to Satan and allowed Eve to take the fall (literally) – it would explain why men, from that day in the garden on, have wimped out. It would also explain why women will never attain equality with men in this corrupt, Satan-inspired world system.

Where are the manly men? Where are the warriors? Where are the men who, like Jesus, are willing to persevere with courage and fortitude, no matter the cost?

Jesus broke the curse! The world is waiting for manly men, those who realize who they are in Christ and who have learned from the master Himself what it means to man-up.

Mgo